Mom raised her glass at my sister’s 300-guest wedding, then asked me, “When’s your turn?”
I said, “Eight months ago. You were invited. Your favorite daughter threw it in the trash.”
The Montgomery estate smells like pine and cinnamon, but it might as well be formaldehyde.
I stand in the center of the living room, my fingers gripping a cream-colored gift box wrapped in silk ribbon, and I can’t stop staring at what’s inside. A lifetime VIP membership to Last Chance Love, an app explicitly marketed to desperate singles over 30. And beneath it, a hardcover book with raised gold lettering, How to Find Happiness When You Die Alone.
A.T. The fire roars in the marble fireplace behind me. Outside the French windows, snow falls in thick, silent sheets, blanketing the manicured grounds.
But inside this room, the cold has nothing to do with December weather. Bella giggles. The sound is high and sharp, echoing off the vaulted ceiling like breaking glass.
“I saw it on TikTok,” my sister says, her voice dripping with false sweetness. “The reviews were amazing. Five stars for women who’ve given up on traditional dating.”
I don’t look up.
I keep staring at that horrible pink app card, at the cartoon illustration of a wilting flower that’s supposed to represent women like me. Women who’ve supposedly expired. “Take it, dear.”
My mother’s voice cuts through the room.
Trinity Montgomery sits perched on the ivory settee, her posture so rigid she could be carved from the same marble as the fireplace. “Bella’s just worried about your future. Don’t let your ego turn you into a spinster forever.”
My father says nothing.
Richard Montgomery stands near the bar cart, swirling bourbon in a crystal tumbler, studying the amber liquid like it holds answers he’s not interested in sharing with me. His business partner, Harrison Sterling, shifts uncomfortably in the leather armchair beside him. Preston Sterling, Bella’s fiancé, examines his phone with sudden, intense focus.
I close the box. Slowly. My hands don’t shake, though something inside my chest feels like it’s cracking open.
Eight months. It’s been eight months since I sent those invitations, since I spent three evenings at my dining table in Austin selecting the perfect cardstock, tying velvet ribbons by hand. Three hundred gram weight, the kind that whispers quality when you hold it.
Nate had watched me from the doorway, his arms crossed, his expression careful. “Are you sure you don’t need to call them?” he’d asked. I’d smoothed another ribbon, my fingers working the silk into a perfect bow.
“They’re my parents. They wouldn’t miss this.”
The memory sits in my throat like a stone. I’d delayed the ceremony for thirty minutes, staring at those two empty chairs in the front row, reserved for dad, reserved for mom.
The signs I’d painted myself on small wooden plaques, decorated with wildflowers because my mother had once mentioned she liked daisies. That was seven years ago. But I remember.
I remember everything they forgot. “Well?”
Bella leans forward on the sofa, her blonde hair cascading over one shoulder in a calculated tumble. Her engagement ring catches the firelight, a three-carat diamond that cost more than my entire wedding.
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